Compound microscope robert hooke biography

No portrait survives of Robert Hooke. His name is somewhatobscure today, due in part to the enmity of his famous, influential,and extremely vindictive colleague, Sir Isaac Newton. Yet Hookewas perhaps the single greatest experimental scientist of theseventeenth century.

His interests knew no bounds, ranging fromphysics and astronomy, to chemistry, biology, and geology, toarchitecture and naval technology; he collaborated or correspondedwith scientists as diverse as Christian Huygens,Antonyvan Leeuwenhoek, Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton.Among other accomplishments, he invented the universal joint, the iris diaphragm,and an early prototype of the respirator; invented the anchor escapementand the balance spring, which made more accurate clocks possible; servedas Chief Surveyor and helped rebuild London after the Great Fire of 1666;worked out the correct theory of combustion; devised an equation describingelasticity that is still used today ("Hooke's Law"); assisted Ro